


Sic transit gloria mundi

by ninamalfoy



Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M, unbetaed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-19
Updated: 2010-07-19
Packaged: 2017-10-10 16:26:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/101752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninamalfoy/pseuds/ninamalfoy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, it's difficult to let go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sic transit gloria mundi

**Author's Note:**

> First posted on LJ on June 11th, 2007.
> 
> Not true in the least bit. I'm just borrowing their public persona to play.

You tell the Spanish newspaper when they ask, eager, that you decided to leave the BVB in February. You look at the little recorder taking in every word you utter, and you know that this bit will be included in an upcoming article about you: the new German centre-back Real Madrid wants.

You know when your team mates know, because Nelson greets you with a "Hola, Cristoph!", a big grin on his face, and you smile back, half-heartedly, and Lars says, "Real Madrid, eh?" and it sounds a bit too cheerful. Maybe it was just offhand, but knowing Lars, you know he doesn't just say things like that. You shrug it off, though.

Your decision's already set.

And you've got to live with your decision and everything that it affects. The time spent with your family, for example – your mother will see you only a handful of times a year if she's lucky, at Christmas and when you can tweak some hours off your Nationalmannschaft meetings, and you will miss out on your brothers' birthday parties, and with the way things are going with Malte and Sabrina, you will probably miss their engagement party, too. Stefan, your eldest brother, is going to marry next year – on the 8th of August, but you hope that you can make this one.

It's a good thing that you don't have a family or a wife or a girlfriend. You know about Torsten and Juve, and you suspect that the small voice in the back of his head will now never shut up. 'What if, what if, what if…', always nagging. Always reminding him of this one chance he missed out on.

You aren't bound to someone; don't have to take care of someone's needs and wants – that's at least what everyone else thinks, what the press thinks, what the clubs think. They think that you are sort of a womanizer, but one of the gentleman kind. One who enjoys it but doesn't brag about how many, where, and so on. One who just doesn't want to settle down too soon.

Let them believe in that illusion. It serves you well. (And _him_, your small voice whispers.)

You have decided in February. That much you tell them, a smile plastered on your lips. "En febrero, sí?" the one reporter says, white teeth gleaming, and you nod. "Sí, sí."

Seven years with the BVB and now it's over. Seven years that turned you from a lanky teenager of barely 20 into the man that you are now, with scars from injuries and operations, stark white lines curving around your ankle. (And there are more scars that no one sees.)

And the time spent with _him_ will be over, too. Well, both of you are still with the national squad, so that means that you'll see him at the Euro 2008, and maybe the next World Cup in 2010. But to see him at training in Dortmund-Brackel, to watch him yank off his shirt in the Borussia locker room, to listen to his chatting with Roman or Lars, to see him standing on the side lines, yelling and gesturing… all this has ended now.

For good.

You remember how he had looked when you told him. He knows that you always wanted to go abroad – hell, he wants to, too. Back then, you both even fantasized about joining the same club. Inter, Barca, Liverpool, Real, ManU… anywhere with a glorious name that you would be proud to carry on your heart. And you would always stick together, and so you'd have a part of home with you in a strange foreign country. You'd have him with you, and he'd be yours. (And if you sometimes fantasized about him splitting up with Tina so he'd be _all_ yours, you always felt bad and the next time you saw her, you smiled at her and told her how nice she looked.)

But Lady Fate had other plans for you – for both of you. He has now a kid, a family, and you know him too well to see that he would never leave them. You saw the anguish in his eyes while he just stared at you, sitting next to you on the couch, the old comfortable brown leather couch that you will take with you to Madrid (too many memories, and it's a part of home, after all). You wanted to touch him, to follow the faint stubble on his jaw line to the delicate shell of his ear, but you gripped your jeaned thigh instead, fighting the urge.

You watched him opening his mouth, searching for words, and then he swallowed hard. "I'm sorry," was all he said, still looking at you. You were sorry, too, and you knew he could see it in your eyes, and then his hand found yours.

You didn't wince at his hard grip, nor did you stop him when his mouth caught yours and neither when he whispered into your ear, your weight upon him and his hand feverish on your back, "fuck me."

He looked at you with a hard-sheened intensity when you buried yourself in him (on the brown leather couch), a leg slung over your shoulder. You stilled, the air around you suddenly feeling stifling and sticky and then his index finger came to rest on your lower lip, following its damp curve. The nail clicked against your teeth and he smiled. "You're beautiful."

Both of you are not sappy fools – in fact, you are more apt to think up the most hilariously whacked birthday presents for each other or play little pranks on each other (you enlisted Philipp to help you with your last scheme, which has been some months already). But right then, you just smiled against his finger and hoped that the wetness you felt in the corner of your eye was just sweat or something. (You returned the compliment later, when he was wrapped around you, drowsing on your shoulder after you successfully brought him off with your mouth wrapped around his cock. You smoothed down his hair, feeling the sweaty strands glide through your fingers, and whispered, "You're gorgeous." You don't know if he heard it.)

When you resumed your thrusts, his head rolled back on the armrest and with that long pale neck with the prominent Adam's apple exposed, it was inevitable that your tongue would follow it up. You arched up over him, pressing in _hard_, into him. Marking him in the ways only you were allowed to. He gasped, and you felt a shudder run through him, the shin on your shoulder twitching, and when you heard him say your name ("_Christoph…_"), half-broken…

He bore your violent orgasm, holding you in his arms while you grappled at his slick-sweated shoulders, not caring if you left marks that he couldn't explain away. (Yours only and forever.)

You didn't want him to go when he buttoned up his shirt, his jeans resting loosely on his hips, the fly not done up yet. But you always kept silent, first for Tina, and now for Tina and Luis. He didn't turn back to you when he was finished. "Maybe it's for the best."

You saw the rigid lines of his shoulders, the bent head, and with a sigh, you got up and put your arms around him. Fingers entwined, like they had done a thousand and a thousand times before, and you whispered, "Maybe."

Now you're sitting at home, filling your life into cardboard boxes or throwing it away, but so far, there are embarrassingly few things in the trash bag next to you. Your mother has offered to help, but you declined. Some things, a man gotta do himself.

It rings, and you look up from sorting through a huge heap of T-shirts with a frown. You didn't forget an appointment or something again?

"Hey," he says, and you stare at him. He's got a package in his hands; something rectangle-ish and wrapped in a newspaper. "Can I come in?"

When he sees the state of the living room – the walls empty of the pictures and paintings, cardboard boxes on the table and next to the couch and the big bookshelves that run along the other wall half empty, he looks as if he wants to say something, but then he holds out the package.

"For you."

"Thanks," you say, and then your fingers touch and you feel the newspaper loosening a bit in your grip – no sticky tape. He watches you as you discard it, the crumpled-up sheets floating down to the floor, and then you're holding a photo album in your hands.

"Just so you remember – well, us." He's half smiling when he says it.

The first picture is a big glossy of you and him laughing together, in the BVB kit – it was the 04/05 season kit – at training, and he has written underneath in his sloping script:

_Metze and Kehli – the Duo Infernale. 2002 – 2007._

You blink once or twice and try to overplay it with flipping through the album. It's full of pictures of the two of you, some that you have already seen on the internet or in newspapers, for example the one where the two of you are sitting and talking on the podium where you received your medals at the World Cup 2006, and many more. You see his handwriting here and there, but the words blur in front of your eyes.

The last page, though. It has a picture of him, and you know that you were the one taking it with his cell. It was a prank as he was that zonked out (it was from around 2003) that you were able to pull down the sheet to his hips and paint a heart in lurid blue toothpaste on his chest. Of course he made a mess of it during the night and there was a hell of payback.

Underneath the picture, he has written something that you have never heard from his lips.

"Basti," and you don't know what to say.

He shrugs, his hands balled up in his jacket pockets. "It's okay." When you look into his eyes, a clear grey that always reminded you of summer rain, clear and refreshing, you see your own regret mirrored in them and a quiet acceptance.

"Need help?" he asks, jerking his head at the living room, or what used to be your living room.

You smile. "Yeah."

 

* fin *


End file.
